We sailed off from Ranong on March 9th with 15 dive professionals from Phuket, Koh Samui and Koh Tao for a unique “Photographer Special” expedition.
In Richelieu Rock it is always a difficult to select what lense to use for a dive as the marine life is so diverse from the smallest to the biggest critters, we alternated wide angle and macro lenses to capture the best of Richelieu Rock; our regular underwater friends the harlequin shrimp (we even saw a few cute little babies this time), the giant frog fish (yay, he is back after hiding so well on our last visit), the ghost pipe fish (2 pairs), the baby seahorse (as well as an adult yellow tiger tail seahorse) were all dashing and ready to pose for our cameras. We also saw so many cowries, they seem to be in season at the moment!
At night, we were all ready for our second black water dive! We inverted groups and those who jumped in first the previous night jumped in second this time and off we went for an incredible 45 minutes dive. Much to our surprise and awe, the waters were full of newly hatched baby sailfish that we felt so incredibly privileged to admire and capture on camera as well as a deep water fish rarely seen by any diver: a juvenile tripod fish, still living the pelagic life befor settling down on the deep sea floor!
There were also lots of squids, alien looking plancton shapes, jellys, baby crabs, little fish larvea, squid and even a pelagic yellow snake! It was a truly a amazing dive! Now that we have discovered blackwater diving, we are surely hooked!!
You might know the saying "less is more"? Well, this surely didn’t apply to our last day at Richelieu rock and we would even go further and say we just can’t get enough of this dive site!! If you want to take a cruise of a week on Richelieu Rock, we might be the right boat for you!
See you again next Week Richelieu and to all our wonderful guests onboard this trip, we certainly look forward to have you back onboard (next week for some, soon & later for the others) !
Only one month left of this "out-of-this-word season"!
Join us for an unforgettable cruise, Thailand has never offered such fantastic dives away from the crowd! Conditions are amazing with more than 30-40 m visibility, Macro life is striving and we just can't get enough!